Embattled Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn will step down at the end of next week, he said this morning, citing competing priorities in his personal, business and political life.Strawn has come under heavy fire recently from presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s backers who think he deliberately refused to acknowledge Santorum’s victory in the caucuses. He said in a letter to Iowa Republicans this morning that Friday, Feb. 10 will be his final day.

“The party is strong and has the resources in place for victory in November,” Strawn wrote. “Now is the time to transition to new leadership.”

GOP party rules say that any vacancy in the chairman job is to be filled by the co-chairman – and in this case, that’s Bill Schickel, a well-liked former state lawmaker and former party secretary from Mason City. The next meeting of the GOP central committee, the party’s board of directors, is Feb. 11.

After revitalizing a party that was beleaguered and in debt when he took over three years ago, Strawn had hinted before the caucuses that he was seriously considering stepping down.

In his resignation announcement this morning, he doesn’t mention the controversy over Iowa’s excruciatingly close caucus count – an omission that could further irritate Santorum’s backers.

Calls for Strawn to leave have intensified in recent days. On Saturday, conservative leaders met at Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition president Steve Scheffler’s office to talk about electing principled conservatives as delegates for the GOP national convention, and the topic of Strawn stepping down came up, according to several in attendance, including Scheffler. The group, which included representatives from the Santorum and canadian online casinos Ron Paul campaigns, but excluded Mitt Romney’s team, talked about either pressuring Strawn to resign or rounding up the nine necessary state central committee votes to fire him, although that wasn’t the purpose of the meeting, they said.

The dissatisfaction with Strawn dates to caucus night, when, after chasing down results from all 1,774 precincts, Strawn took to the microphones at about 1:30 a.m. to say that Romney had 30,015 votes – just eight more than Santorum’s 30,007.

“Congratulations to Governor Mitt Romney, winner of the 2012 Iowa caucuses,” Strawn he told the TV cameras. “Congratulations to Senator Santorum, for a very close second-place finish. An excellent race here.” He later said he felt pressure, given the national press scrutiny that night, to name a definitive winner.

Two and a half weeks later, GOP officials finished up a final vote tally based on the counts precinct leaders recorded on Jan. 3 on the official party document called a Form E.

This certified result showed Santorum up by 34 votes – but Strawn on Jan. 19 said the race was too close to call.

Although the results reported by those eight precincts on caucus night showed Santorum was the clear winner, Strawn said he couldn’t trust those numbers because GOP officials had found typos in 131 other precincts’ caucus-night results.

Santorum backers led an outcry – and others have joined the chorus – saying Strawn’s refusal to name Santorum the outright winner was evidence of bias. The chairman had promised to stay neutral to give all candidates a fair shot.

The Des Moines Register negotiated for an exclusive on breaking the certified results, but Strawn’s detractors accused him of trying to frame the story in a way that deprived Santorum of much-deserved publicity for a No. 1 finish.

Strawn has said he was trying to protect the integrity of the caucus process by being cautious with the certified results, and was unprepared for criticism that targeted him personally. The state central committee met late on Jan. 20, a Friday night, to demand a news release declaring Santorum the official victor.

The reversal brought down a hailstorm of negative attention on the Iowa GOP, including speculation that the fumble could jeopardize Iowa’s role as the first state to vote in the presidential nominating contest every four years.

Last week, Strawn met with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s chief of staff, Jeff Boeyink, who said he and the governor would support him whether he stayed or left.

“We want Matt to be successful in whatever he does,” Boeyink, who Strawn tapped in 2009 as the party’s executive director, told the Register this morning. “Matt Strawn has done a tremendous job with the party and the governor had hoped that he would continue to serve.”

During Branstad’s weekly news conference a week ago, when asked about the calls for Strawn’s resignation, the governor said the GOP chief has done a “great job” under “difficult circumstances.”

This morning, Branstad in a statement said: “Matt took over at a time when the party was in desperate shape, and rebuilt it precinct-by-precinct, putting it in the strongest position in years. … Matt’s leadership will be missed, but I am confident a smooth transition will take place at the Republican Party of Iowa and we will continue our party’s successes this November.”

Other Republicans, including the GOP leaders in the Iowa Legislature, have also defended the Republican Party of Iowa’s handling of the Iowa caucus voting process.

Senate Minority Leader Jerry Behn, R-Boone, in a statement this morning thanked Strawn for his “tireless dedication to the cause of promoting our great party, its values, principles and candidates.”

Former party chairman Steve Grubbs this morning said: “Matt Strawn has been a very effective chairman for the Republican Party of Iowa. Two years ago he lead the party to historic wins. For Republicans to turn on him now is very shortsighted.”

Grubbs, of Davenport, said Iowa Republicans created the caucus process in the 1970s, which is non-binding, with looser vote-counting procedures than typical elections. “Ultimately, it was bound to have problems, and the fact that it happened on Matt Strawn’s watch is less his problem and more the problem Iowa Republican need to tackle in the next three years,” Grubbs told the Register.

Strawn, who has done dozens of TV interviews as the public face of Iowa GOP party politics, also released this morning a goodbye video telling Iowans it was an “honor, privilege and an opportunity of a lifetime” to be their chairman.

He said Republicans in Iowa together gained ground since he began as chairman in January 2009 – the caucuses remained first in the nation, and turnout this year was the highest ever; the party broke fundraising records and hosted three nationally televised GOP presidential debates in Iowa; and Republican statewide celebrated victories, including in the Iowa House and governor’s mansion.

“Simply put, your Iowa GOP is better off than it was four years ago thanks to outstanding teamwork,” Strawn said.

In his resignation letter, Strawn said the chairman job is a volunteer position, but he has treated it as “a full-time calling.”

“There’s no question the job of rebuilding our party was a huge one, and one to which I committed every minute that was necessary to succeed,” he wrote. “It is only because the Iowa GOP has returned as a strong and relevant voice in Iowa politics that I am now able to evaluate all the competing priorities in my personal, business and political life.”

Strawn, a married father of three young children, is the co-owner of the Iowa Barnstormers, the Des Moines-based Arena Football League team. He’s also a founding partner of an Ankeny-based public relations and capital development firm, and is a part of the management of his family’s farm in eastern Iowa.

Asked about his reaction to criticism about how he handled the caucus results, Strawn told the Register this morning: “We’ll let the record stand for itself.”

A SHORT HISTORY

JOB DESCRIPTION: In a state with warring Republican factions, the state GOP chairman is the central figure, tasked with uniting and strengthening Iowa’s 99 county-level party organizations. The job is part cheerleader and part fundraiser. It involves lobbying the Republican National Committee for Iowa’s leadoff presidential nominating caucuses.

PREVIOUS CHAIRS: Two-term GOP Chairman Ray Hoffmann stepped down in January 2008 amid criticism by some party leaders that the Sioux City businessman was not as focused on the party’s election-year needs as he should have been. Stewart Iverson, a popular former Iowa Senate leader, took over after Hoffmann, and in February that year fired the GOP’s executive director, Chuck Laudner, and political director, Craig Robinson. Iverson didn’t seek re-election after his first year.

JANUARY 2009: Strawn, who helped breathe life into the Iowa Barnstormers football team, took the reins of the beleaguered Iowa Republican Party. The GOP in Iowa had ended 2008 much like its national counterpart: dispirited. John McCain lost Iowa by 9 percentage points. Republicans lost seats in the Iowa House and Senate. The party faced a widening deficit in voter registration in comparison to Democrats.

RISE AND FALL: Iowa Republicans have credited Strawn with revitalizing the party, keeping the peace between social conservatives and business-oriented Republicans, paying off debt, growing the GOP voter rolls, and making much-needed technology and building improvements at party headquarters. But he has faced sharp criticism in recent days from some conservatives, including Robinson, now editor of the influential website TheIowaRepublican.com, for his handling of the caucus results.